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WASHINGTON - November 25 - Today the Sierra Club denounced the
United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) announcement that the agency intends to
buy $50 million worth of pork, as a classic case of corporate welfare.

"Corporate hogs are feeding at the public trough," declared Ken Midkiff,
Director of the Missouri Sierra Club. "It is shameful that the USDA and other
government agencies give giant agribusiness corporations millions and millions of taxpayer
dollars that result in a market glut of hogs, and then invest many millions more to bail
them out."

In recent years, large corporations have established massive hog operations throughout the
country -- with equally massive subsidies and financial assistance by all levels of
government. These huge facilities have, in turn, glutted the market with hogs
-- resulting in historically-low market prices. In the process, the air, land and
water around the facilities have been seriously fouled by harmful pollutants. This
industry bailout comes at the request of the National Pork Producer's Council, one of the
primary advocates for corporate hog interests in America.

"USDA should be directing aid to family farmers and independent producers, as they
are the ones who have really been harmed, and in some cases, literally run out of
business." continued Midkiff. "But this is pork barrel spending at its
worst."

In key states such as North Carolina, Iowa and Missouri, family farmers have been forced
out of the hog business because they are unable to sustain the below-cost prices.
The corporate swine operations -- with giant companies Seaboard, Murphy's, and
Continental Grain leading the way - have received hundreds of millions of dollars of
taxpayer-provided subsidies in gaining this market control.

"This display of corporate welfare stinks," said Midkiff. "It stinks almost
as bad as the giant hog factories themselves."

The Sierra Club and other environmental organizations have aligned with family farm groups
and rural communities throughout the country to rein in this takeover. Environmentalists
and rural residents are alarmed by pollution entering local streams, rivers, lakes,
and estuaries -- and by the overwhelming stench emanating from operations with 2500 to
250,000 hogs.

A recent TIME magazine series documented the government largesse flowing into the
corporate hog operations. ("The Empire of Pigs" Time, November 30, 1998.) The
authors used as an example Seaboard, Inc., an agribusiness with annual revenues of $1.8
billion with operations in places ranging from Ecuador, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Kansas, to
Haiti. Seaboard has received more than $100 million in subsidies, incentives,
government-backed bonds, and grants from municipalities, counties, states, and the US
Department of Agriculture.